Le Depart (By Sexghosts)
by CatandKaraForever
Summary: The beginning of Kara's "hero journey".


**Le Depart (By Sexghosts)  
Rating: K+**

Cat arranged for a public handing-off of super-duties: the striking visual of Supergirl shaking hands with Diana in her full-blown Wonder Woman regalia would be splashed across computer screens and front pages for the next week. Kara wanted Cat to come to the airport to say goodbye, but she declined, telling Kara that she needed to say goodbye to her friends, and she was right. Winn turned up, and James with Lucy, and Alex, and Diana in her street clothes. Just as well, Kara thought; she and Cat had already said their real goodbyes. Besides, all her friends (except Diana) throwing shade at Cat would just be a distraction. They didn't really understand, and they were all still mad at Cat.

Before she walked through the departure gate, Diana pressed something into her palm, a flat, bronze circle with a dark red gem on one side and what looked like Greek script on the back. "A gift for you, in case you want it."

 _Jewelry?_ Kara wondered. She turned it over in her hand a couple of times. "Thank you?"

Diana smiled, understanding the unspoken question in Kara's voice. "If you ever decide you'd like to visit my home, cover the stone with your thumb and read the writing on the back of the medallion. It'll take you there."

Kara nodded, baffled but appreciative at the kindness. "Thanks," she said, her heart feeling vacant and numb.

She hugged everyone. Alex promised she'd be over to see her soon and told her to give a shout when she felt ready to start working with the DEO again. She got on the plane, turned off her phone, and slept most of the way to Paris.

Kara didn't know if it was luck that her CatCo apartment happened to be in the most charming part of the city or if Cat had arranged for it. It was on the second floor of a pretty little white building with pale blue shutters overlooking a square that hosted an art market on the weekends, and it faced what looked like an excellent bakery. It was a strange experience riding in the cab from the airport and passing through a dozen different neighborhoods with beautiful old buildings. Everything in Paris, she realized, was beautiful. From the grand buildings to the cobblestones of the smaller, older streets, everything was enchanting; from the skyline to the ornately curved iron Metro entrances to the green of the street-sweepers' outfits, everything had character. Everything seemed to have been crafted down to the last detail with aesthetics in mind.

She arrived on the charming block in Montmartre early in the cool, wet spring evening, the fading light pale and buttery on the white faces of the buildings. She pulled her suitcase up the stairs to the modest, tastefully furnished apartment. It looked like a catalog photo; the cream colors in the rug catching the cream in the striped curtains, the dark wood of the coffee table an accent on the lighter wood of the floors. It was pristine; nothing was out of place. It seemed clear that it hadn't been lived in for a while but was regularly cleaned. Her other belongings would be arriving via FedEx in a few days, but for now, it was just Kara, alone with her suitcase in this painfully perfect room. She peered into the cabinets and found nothing, so she'd have to go grocery shopping.

Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Cat.  
 _Did you get in alright?_

Kara bit her lip. She waited for a few moments, and then texted back, simply:  
 _Yes. The trip was OK. It's beautiful here._

 _You have a lot to do, getting settled in. Do yourself a favor and go to that bakery across the square. Get yourself some macaroons. The rose flavored ones are the best._

 _Thanks._

There were no more texts after that, because how could there be, without things dissolving quickly into the maudlin? _I miss you, I'm alone, I don't know what's going to happen and I shouldn't be afraid, but I am. And it's so pretty here and it feels wrong that I can't have you here to share it with me._

She curled up and wept at the enormity of it all, and then had a hot shower and went to sleep. She could worry about groceries tomorrow. Right now she just needed to pull inwards, comfort herself, and try to be as ready and on her toes as she could be when she arrived at CatTV's Paris Bureau in the morning.

Philippe Comeaux, the CatTV Paris bureau chief, was about a foot shorter than Kara and spoke twice as fast as she did in alternating French and English. Sometimes she even heard him yelling excitedly at someone on the phone in German. He was cheerful in a way that Cat wasn't and warm in a way that she hadn't seen in Cat until they'd really gotten close, but she still had the distinct impression there was some Perry White in him. It wasn't a stretch to imagine him heaving a chair through a plate glass window.

The CatTV offices were bright, airy and decorated with pops of color and floor-to-ceiling stencil-art murals by Blek le Rat. Kara had a desk in the bullpen, though she didn't find herself sitting there very often. She spent a lot of time running; running to Philippe's office, running to the graphics department, running to editorial, running to broadcast. Her desk phone was on forward to her cell more than half the time. The first week was a little rocky as she learned the particulars of how things ran in Paris, but it was a good thing. She had something to throw herself into, and it put a bit of daylight between herself and how badly she missed Cat, Alex, and National City.

She was homesick, but she had her sweet disposition and smarts and work ethic, and she quickly learned how things were done. She made a few casual friends; Manon, the pretty, put-upon brunette in editorial, and Julien, the handsome gay guy who sat a few desks down from her. He always looked like he'd just rolled out of bed, but in that good way. Julien offered to take her shopping. Kara sighed, "Why is everyone always trying to pick out my clothes?"

Julien laughed. "Your clothes are fine. But come on, we have the best shopping, don't you want to go?"

So Kara relented, and she couldn't deny that Julien's eye was perfect. Nearly everything he pulled off the rack was a win, and Kara had to exercise a lot of restraint to not buy everything. She did buy the shoes, though: a cute pair of black fold-over combat boots that were surprisingly comfortable despite being cut somewhat slim. Those, and that black cashmere sweater. That was enough for now.

Julien was funny and cheerful and chattered a lot, and he wanted to know everything about her. Kara wanted to be interesting for her new friends. Even grumpy Manon had tons of questions about National City and the States in general and it turned out all three of them liked a lot of the same television shows.

"All we watch is your stuff," Manon explained with a sigh over lunch one day. "We have nothing good."

Kara didn't believe her.

"I promise you," Manon insisted grumpily. "This is France. We have nothing good."

Julien dismissed her with a flick of his wrist. "No, it's just American television is better," he corrected her.

Eventually the question came that Kara had been dreading because she hadn't decided how she was going to answer it: why had she relocated to France?

"I needed a change of scenery," she said. "And I've always wanted to live here for a while."

Julien glanced over at Manon. "Breakup?"

Manon nodded. "Breakup. Right?"

They both looked expectantly at Kara.

After a hesitant moment, she admitted, "Yeah. It was a breakup. I don't know, I think maybe it's not a forever breakup, but…" She paused. "But she and I both needed a little time apart."

There. It was out there. In some tiny little way, she'd declared herself.

Julien's eyebrow barely quirked. Manon shrugged, and sipped her coffee. "Well, it's good, you know. You get to travel a little bit, and you get a break."

Julien grinned. "And you met the two of us, so it's worth it." He patted her on the shoulder. "So is she like you? Very cute, very American?"

Kara laughed a little. "Very American, yes. I don't know if cute's the right word. Stunning, maybe." That dull pain squeezed around her heart for a moment, but she shook it off and soldiered on. "Anyway, I'm having a great time here. It's so beautiful, and you've all been so patient with my French." When in doubt, reach for something self-effacing to say.

Julien snorted. "You're nearly perfect, you know."

Manon nodded in agreement. "I can hardly even hear your accent at all."

Kara blushed. She had to get better at accepting compliments.

Kara had liked running traffic, but she'd never really considered that it had as much to do with working for Cat as it did with the job itself. When Cat called upon her to help red-team a story, it was a task that fell outside traffic management—that Kara was being pulled in on it simply because Cat knew she had a talent for research and fact-checking. Strictly speaking, that was an editorial job. Philippe had made it clear that he was not going to offer her tasks outside of her well-defined role until she had proven she could grow beyond it. And that was normal. That was the way it was supposed to work in professional environments.

But that was fine. After all, nothing motivated Kara like having something to prove.

Her weekdays were long, though not as long as they'd been when she worked for Cat. Her weekends were spent lunching and shopping with Julien and Manon, or wandering the art market alone; sometimes she even trudged around Sacré Coeur with her camera and took photos. You could get a good view of the city from there and every time she climbed those steps, rain or shine, night or day, it stirred feelings that she couldn't quite name.

Once, she found a painting at the art market of a little boy angel that looked strikingly like Carter. She couldn't help herself. She took a snap of it and texted it to Cat with a silly comment wondering whether she'd been loaning Carter out as an art model. Cat replied back only with a smile emoji.

Their communication continued to be sparse. The whole point, Kara kept reminding herself, was to take space. But everywhere she went, every beautiful vista, every Saturday afternoon in the park by the Louvre, every cafe window she looked out of with the rain splashing onto the cobblestone streets and gurgling down the gutters, everything was a reminder that this was a perfect place for lovers and that she had left hers at home.

One Saturday during lunch at a small, almost-hidden spot on île St. Louis, Kara, Julien and Manon were bickering about whether to go see a movie later that night. Kara felt like going home and working on some writing, or going through some of her photographs, or ... or anything that didn't involve other people. But Julien was persistent about a film he wanted to see, and finally, Manon got tired of his pushing and sighed. "Kara, he has a girl he wants to set you up with. This is why he's being such a pain in the ass."

Julien looked offended. "I am not being a pain in the ass." He looked pointedly at Kara. "I am not, right?"

Kara smiled. "No, you're not, but… Julien, I appreciate it but I really don't think I'm ready for dating, much less a blind date."

Manon punched him in the shoulder. "I told you." She got up. "I'll be back," she said. "I'm going outside for a smoke."

"You smoke too much," Kara called after her.

"I know," Manon called back over her shoulder.

Julien grinned at her. "Don't you even want to know about her before you say no?"

Kara shook her head. "No, not really. I'm not ready for that."

"She's a pianist," Julien pressed on, undeterred. "Jazz. She tours with … you know Regina Carter, yes?"

Kara wasn't a jazz aficionado; she thought she'd heard the name before but couldn't quite place it.

"She looks a little like Manon," he added, "if Manon ever smiled."

Kara chuckled. Oddly enough, she liked Manon's grumpiness. It was somehow comforting—a message that it was okay to not be happy all the time.

She glanced over Julien's shoulder and saw Manon wrestling with a lighter that refused to stay lit in the springtime breezes, and she was about to stagger off of the curb into the street. She saw a car careening around the near corner and … well, Clark had been right. If it was in your blood, you couldn't help it. She swept past Julien, out the front door, faster than the blink of an eye, and pulled Manon out of the path of the moving car. She stood panting for a moment, with the car blaring its horn at them as it rolled past, and Manon looking startled at Kara's arms around her waist.

"That car nearly hit you," Kara said breathlessly.

"Where did you come from?" Manon demanded. "You were just inside a moment ago!"

Julien came running out, looking back and forth between the two of them, clearly trying to decide whether he was going to let himself explain away what he'd just seen. "Are you alright?" he asked Manon.

"Yes, but … how did she get out here so quickly?"

Julien shrugged and smiled. "So she's fast, lucky for you, eh? Or you'd be flattened!"

Manon glanced between them, rattled but somehow still looking skeptical, then pulled herself out of Kara's arms. "Well. Thank you, then."

Kara had packed her suit but she hadn't worn it yet. She felt she needed time to get to know the city before she could even think about becoming its hero, even temporarily. But Manon had been about to get hit by that car, and Kara did the only thing she knew how to do.

And so, once again, in some tiny little way, she had declared herself.

She started to take advantage of being in Europe, and so weekends found her spending fewer afternoons with Julien and Manon and more time by herself in other places; she could, within minutes, fly to London, Brussels, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Athens. She swam in the blue tides of Mykonos and ate the freshest seafood on earth, she visited the Vatican and the Ufizzi Gallery, and she took the little boats through canals of Amsterdam. She smoked hashish in a Dutch coffee shop just because she hadn't done it in college and she wanted to be able to say she had, despite it not really doing whatever it was that it was supposed to do. She took some gorgeous photos and occasionally sent a few to Cat, who seemed pleased that Kara was traveling and encouraged her to do it as much as she could. She saw the Astronomical Clock and tasted nakládaný hermelín in Prague; she ate bureks from a street vendor at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. With each trip, her world expanded a little more.

She would bring back little souvenirs for Julien and Manon—beaded bracelets from Turkey, little pieces of the Berlin Wall in clear glass cubes. She spent evenings wandering the breathakingly beautiful streets or watching American television shows and eating the rose-flavored macaroons Cat had gotten her addicted to. She was feeling a kind of restlessness in her job, and the weekends away seemed to help alleviate it. On a few more rare occasions she swept in and saved someone who needed saving, knowing that at some point she would do something so big that she would inevitably be recognized. She wasn't really sure she cared anymore.

Alex called one night after she'd been there about two months. Kara was even happier to hear from her than usual.

"How's the job?"

"It's okay."

"Heard you pulled someone out of a burning building in the Marais last week."

A beat of silence. "I thought I'd been discreet about that."

Alex snickered a little. "Come on, Kara. You didn't think I wasn't going to keep an eye on you, did you?"

Kara shook her head, mostly at her own nearsightedness. "I guess not."

"So? You ready to come back to work? Paris DEO could use you."

Kara paused uncomfortably. "I don't know, Alex. I'm glad I've been able to help a few people, but I'm not sure I'm ready to put the suit back on, you know?"

Alex sighed unhappily. "I know, Kara. I just worry that you're denying a part of yourself. I'm worried that's not good for you."

"Not exactly," Kara responded. "I'm just … I'm trying to find a different way to be who I am, and… that's just going to take a little time, that's all."

Alex made some little reassuring noises. "I know, I know…. So…. Meet any cute French girls? Or… you know, guys? Potted plants?"

"Oh," Kara chuckled, "well, I _am_ shacked up with a very sexy potted geranium."

A little pause followed, and Kara could feel Alex wanting to ask her about Cat but holding back.

"So," Kara sighed, "how's Diana doing? National City still standing?"

"Oh, yeah, she's great," Alex replied easily. "I mean, you know, everyone misses you, but she's helped us out at the DEO a few times, and the city seems to accept her. And I can't lie, that lasso of truth thing is…. very helpful." She paused. "How'd Clark get her to do this for you, anyway?"

Kara shrugged. "She owed Clark a favor. And...I don't know. We had a few beers together. She liked me, I guess."

Alex gave out a little, "Hm."

Kara sighed. "Listen, don't worry, Alex. I'm good. I'm having a great time. I'm seeing Europe. The job is cool and I'm good at it. And… you know, I'm still trying to answer some questions, but it's going alright. And please tell Mom not to worry, okay?"

"How'd you know she asks me about you every other day?" Alex sighed wearily.

"Just a guess. She knows I can fly home in like an hour if I want, right?"

"You know that makes no difference, right?"

Kara looked at the little medallion Diana had given her. Talking to Alex had reminded her that, while she was expanding her experiences and learning things about her own tastes and the world and its cultures, she still had some growing to do. She wasn't going to accomplish it swimming in Mykonos or hiking in the Pyrenees.

Diana Prince was the most calm, self-assured, well-adjusted person Kara had ever met, human or not. There had to be something to that. There had to be something they knew on Themyscira that hadn't made its way to the rest of the world, and for the first time Kara was anxious to know what it was. She was feeling suddenly impatient. Running editorial traffic, shopping with Julien and Manon, and stopping the occasional accident—were all fine and good, but they weren't giving her answers. Her baby steps were moving her forward, but they weren't enough.

She'd once heard the term "shakabuku." It meant a "swift, spiritual kick to the head," and that was what she needed now. She had no way of knowing whether a trip to Themyscira would give her that, but it was one thing that she hadn't tried. She dug around in her belongings and found the medallion that Diana had given her, covered the gem with her thumb, and began to read the inscription. The room went white.


End file.
